Tony Abbott’s been claiming again that New Zealand is an object lesson in why we don’t need the level of economic stimulus delivered by the Rudd government. Abbott, who said in an interview in 2003 that he found economics a “bore”, first made this claim on the 7.30 Report back in January. Peter Martin was quick to point out that New Zealand had gone through a recession in five consecutive quarters.
In a withering column, Peter Hartcher asks:
Tony Abbott is trying to restrain Barnaby Joyce from blurting nonsense, but who will restrain Tony Abbott?
Is Abbott deliberately mendacious, or just ill-informed and sloppy with the truth?
“Is Abbott deliberately mendacious, or just ill-informed and sloppy with the truth?”
What’s this “or” bullshit? People Skills is obviously both.
“Is Abbott deliberately mendacious, or just ill-informed and sloppy with the truth?”
Yes.
Yeah. He’s obviously an ill-informed lying bastard who doesn’t check his facts. Which brings me to the wider point – since he is so obviouly wrong about NZ’s economy and clearly will not listen to anyone who tells him New Zealand is an economic cactus because it followed Abbott-type policies, how can we believe anything else he tells us from the economy, to climate change, to virginity to the basic and entirely uneeded skills of ironing.
All that is left is – to make up one’s mind whether Abbott is a bigger liar than Howard. He’s certainly not a better one – he’s too easy to pin down.
It’s a strange and whacky world we live in.
Abbott, for the official conservatives, says economics is boring — so boring in fact that we won’t bother to check that the things he wants to claim about them correspond with observable reality. Apparently, the entire front bench is similarly uninterested in getting across the detail and focus on repeating sound bytes that fir “retail politics”. Apparently it’s OK to say things, which, if accepted at face value by ratings agencies, would undermine the currency and sharply push up the service costs of the debt they claim to be worried about and which are utterly bogus.
Modern conservatives apparently don’t trust the market either, and prefer that governments intervene to pick winners, because governments are so much better equipped to do infrastructure cost-effectively. Official conservatives think the business of using market forces to acheive policy ends is really a leftist plot to err … bring down capitalism and return to the stone age. Modern conservatives, if Abbott is to be believed, also think governments are responsible for every untoward ripple in the firmament. Apparently, if anyone in a small business gets injured, it’s not the small business that is responsible, but the government, due to its unwillingness to regulate pervasively.
It’s hard to believe that any significant number of business folk could want to be represented by such conservatives.
Paul burns @3, whether he’s a bigger liar than the rodent is hard to call at this stage, I’d suggest. But he is well tainted by his part in the previous government’s skullduggery, and I don’t see him changing his spots any time soon. Cheap rugs spring to mind.
NZ is still recovering from Rogernomics, isn’t it?
(It’s rather odd having a thatcherite in a labour party.)
If I remember rightly, wages are about 30% less than in Australia – I wonder if that’s part of Abbott’s Brutopian vision?
Mark,
This praise of dry NZ economics goes back at least as far as Hewson’s time, if not before, on the conservative side of politics. I have a vague recollection of Abbott singing the praises of the Dickensian industrial relations policy and heartless welfare policies way back then. (That was in the days before Howard when we thought it couldn’t happen here.)
What are Abbott’s advisers doing with themselves?
So he makes this blue once and is caught out by Peter Martin. Then promptly repeats it again. Some people must be doing their job if they did not pick that one up and warn him. Either that or he is just too egotistical to listen.
What confuses me is that The Nice Mr Key, Prime Munster of New Zealand, is dead set keen to see NZ catch up with Oztraya by any means necessary (except by raising wages). To hear that The Abbott thinks Australia should catch up to NZ makes me wonder what would happen if they were each Prime Munster of their respective countries. Much tail-chasing?
I wonder if this is a preamble to The Abbott declaring that more is less? Slashing Oz wages by 30% “to improve living standards”? Or is it just reducing envirnmental protection, allow mining in National Parks (oops, too late), publish school league tables, commit to climate change and genefluct to HM the Queen? Because I’m sure that the Nice Mr Key would love to see the intervention policies used against NZ beneficiaries. There’s bound to be other areas of policy cross-fertilisation.
One tip The Abbott could take is The Nice Mr Key saying nothing controversial until *after* he wins the election.
As an expat Kiwi, who goes back there frequently, I wouldn’t go rushing to emulate their economic policies. They are a low-wage, low-productivity economy. The highly skilled and educated tend to leave the country as soon as they’re qualified (Australia’s gain). NZ was held back through the ’90s by the wacky monetary policy experiments of its then Reserve Bank governor (and future National Party leader) Don Brash. It has a more pragmatic central bank now, but it has struggled ever since.
The National Party there is hostage to a very wealthy and well funded farm lobby, which basically operates a cartel in dairy products. The regular workforce, meanwhile, is cast adrift to “the market” with very little basic protections and able to be dismissed on a whim.
Neo-libertarians used to love NZ because its unitary, unicameral and first-past-the-post political system meant the executive could do whatever it liked. That’s why they opted for the German mixed-member proportional representation model – to stop political parties coming in on one platform and then doing something completely different.
I think Abbott’s economic advice might be 25 years out of date.
Well that, at least, is an advance on his social and cultural advice which would be closer to 50 and a 100 years out of date.
Mr Abbott is a man of conviction. Dont like it dont vote for him. I for one Say a short daily prayer to the lord that Mr Abbott prevails and becomes our pre eminent politician. At least when he speaks you can trust him to stand by his word.
Elbowgrease@12
No now don’t be so coy. Either you are unhinged or what you are really saying is that you like the words he utters. Nobody sane votes for bloody-minded megalomaniacs unless they believe said megalomaniac shares their cultural preferences. It is far better if people who have a range of odd policy preferences don’t keep their word.
Fortunately Abbott is no more a man of conviction than any of the others. He has had several positions on the ETS alone. He was called a political weather vane, and that is not far off being apt. If this is unfair at all it is because unlike the weathervane he is sometimes confused about which way the wind is blowing.
Indeed Fran. I think Mr Abbott does need a weatherman (or at least a cardinal) to tell him from which point of the moral compass the wind is blowing.
Abbott displays such enormous compassion for industrial casualties, like he did for Bernie Banton.
I don’t think Abbott’s lying.
He just doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. Abbott comes-out with this stuff and probably truly believes it at the time he’s saying it.
The problem is that it’s just plain wrong and he hasn’t bothered to check-up on the facts before offering an opinion. His admission that “economics is a bore” give us a clue as to what’s going on here: He hates the subject and thus doesn’t bother to inform himself on such matters.
They are of absolutely no interest to him.
Tony will get all worked-up over those matters that are of interest to him (like abortion, pre-marital sex and the like), but matters economic just don’t make the cut.
Being Opposition Leader he’s nevertheless expected to comment on all the subjects of the day (and not just those passionate to him personally). He therefore does his best: Bravely engaging the Abbott mouth on anything and everything, usually while the Abbott brain is still in neutral.
The result is obvious: Barnaby Joyce in lycra shorts.
God help us all if he ever gets into the Lodge.
As the actress said to the, um, Bishop.
Thanks, Mark — I am having a baddish morning and this post made me LOL.
Well, I suppose we can take it as given, P.C., that Tone perpetually has his hand on it and definitely needs the help of others that do not.
Incidentally, I meant to say @9 ….”Some people must not be doing their job if they did not pick that one up and warn him”.
I’m wondering whether telling lies is simply all the Libs have got left.
Our local member accused the government of doing something earlier this week. The government came out later and said no, it had never any intention of doing it.
Clearly, someone was lying.
Our local member – and local media – is claiming this as a victory.
If they’d never made the accusation, apparently, the government would have gone ahead and done it.
NZ has to operate in a different economic environment than Australia so comparisons are difficult. It is quite likely that the best strategies for Australia are different than those for NZ. So any argument that says that we should do something because it has worked in NZ needs to be treated with caution. Abbot should understand this.
What puts Abbot in the Barnaby class is to hold NZ up as the way things should be done when it doesn’t take much checking to realize that this claim doesn’t stand up to scutiny.
What we are seeing is just another of example of what is wrong with Abbot. He launches things, such as his direct action plan, before having done the necessary homework. In addition, he is hoping that if you tell the same lie often enough times people will start to believe. The NZ example should be dismissed as just another of Abbot’s great big lies about everything.
You’re a bit slow to the party, mehitabel. I reckon it’s been obvious for years that lies is all the Libs have.